Stand By Me
by Marauder-In-Disguise
Summary: Or, Five Times David Rossi Knew He Had A Friend  And One Time He Returned The Favour.  Rated for strong language throughout.
1. Desk Duty

**A/N: Written for the CCOAC Silver Screen Challenge. I chose David Rossi and 'Stand By Me', and I was given Jason Gideon, who was the character I was really hoping for. **

**Disclaimer: I own nothing – if I did, TG would have had a beard years ago ;)**

_It happens sometimes. Friends come in and out of our lives like busboys in a restaurant.  
>'Stand By Me'<em>

The only trouble with mild paranoia and obsessive compulsive tendencies, David Rossi realised, was when you came up against someone who was equally so and couldn't expect them to make allowances any more than they could expect it from you. The two unclaimed desks in the brand new BAU office were polar opposites and the cause of the rapidly developing headache that Dave could feel in his temples; one backed onto a wall with a good view out of the window and a reasonable distance to the coffee machine. The other could only be described as hell on earth; the back of the occupant exposed to the wide room, no window and four extra steps to the coffee machine.

From the look on Jason Gideon's face, he was thinking much the same thing. Dave eyed him carefully, trying to anticipate what the best move would be, because it was more than a battle for the best remaining desk. It was an outright war that neither would care to back down from. In the boy's club that the BAU had become, saving face was everything.

Which is exactly why Dave didn't understand when Jason suddenly shrugged and set his box on the demon desk. He shot Dave a rare, but vague, smile and said nothing. With a shrug and a silence of his own, Dave settled quickly at his prize and unpacked his box.

If Dave noticed after that how Jason's shoulders would tense whenever the door to the office opened behind him, he didn't mention it. But then if Dave went for coffee, he'd always pick up an extra cup and walk eight more steps – four there and four back – to deliver it. Never let it be said that David Rossi was an ungrateful son of a bitch.


	2. Negotiations

**For disclaimer see chapter one**

A kid holding a freakin' baby, Dave! What the hell were you trying to do, start a fucking riot?"

Max Ryan had always been a ranter, although Dave hadn't quite expected it to start the moment he stepped through the door on his return from Chicago. The last thing he needed was a lecture, as though he didn't understand the implications of what had happened; a teenage boy caught in the middle of a hostage negotiation shot in the head by a trigger happy SWAT agent on Dave's watch. Between local uniforms baying for his blood and his own damn conscience that refused to be silenced by scotch, Dave was perfectly aware that he was to blame. Max, on the other hand, seemed to think that he was saying something new.

"You're just lucky that they're playing it down to the press or you'd be fucking public enemy number one! You're probably gonna be out on your ass as it is, once the director finds out exactly what happened! I mean for Christ's sake, Dave, what were you thinking?"

"Oh I don't know, Max!" Dave snapped, entirely at the end of his tether, "I left my hotel yesterday morning thinking that I needed to have an innocent kid's blood on my hands. You think that was my first damn mistake?"

"This isn't my fault, Dave! Don't-"

"That's enough."

The direction was firm and quiet, laced with none of the anger that the two of them were exchanging. They looked automatically towards the door, where Jason had been standing unnoticed for the duration of their argument, and before either of them could plead their case, he spoke again.

"The last thing David needs right now is for us to turn on him, Max. You know that. I can smell the scotch on his clothes from here. I think he knows the implications without you yelling them at him."

"He probably does, Jason, but that doesn't-"

"Max, I said that's enough. He needs a friend right now. Be his friend or back the hell off."

And then he was gone, without once raising his voice or sounding anything but pleasant. Max turned to Dave, momentarily speechless, and Dave took the chance to make his escape before he regained the ability to speak. It was childish, he knew, to run away but he just didn't care. Instead, he headed in the direction Jason had taken just a moment before, safe in the knowledge that at least one person in the world didn't want to see him hang.

It was an absurdly comforting thought.


	3. Drowning

**A/N – Thanks for all reviews and alerts so far!**

**For disclaimer see chapter 1**

Looking back, Dave wasn't sure why he had gone to the bar that night. With the ink still wet on the paperwork for divorce number two, he was stuck in an awkward limbo of being relieved that he was finally free and of trying to combat the feeling of having been punched in the gut. He didn't even know what he _should_ be feeling, let alone what he actually _was_; all he knew was that the drunker he got, the harder it became to separate Marie from Emma in his mind, and that didn't feel good.

"I thought I'd find you here."

"Piss off Jason," he mumbled, pointedly throwing back another drink.

He was only half surprised when he instead felt the other man slip onto the stool besides him and order a very large glass of iced water from the bar tender, which he placed wordlessly at Dave's elbow. Neither of them spoke for a long while, Jason tracing patterns in the splashes of drink on the bar whilst Dave fitted in two more drinks which were certainly not ice water, until Dave made his first mistake and snapped.

"Why are you here, Jason?"

"I thought you might want to talk," he shrugged, carefully dragging a circle of beer out into a star shape.

"Well I don't. Leave me alone."

"Have you started thinking about Emma yet?"

The effect was instant; with a half growl, half strained laugh, Dave downed the glass of water and got unsteadily to his feet. Jason put a hand under his arm and together they headed slowly for the door.

"How did you know?"

"I thought you'd been there long enough to get to that place," he said conversationally, opening the door of his car and pushing Dave into the passenger seat, "Time for you to get some sleep I think. You're exhausted."

"What are you now, a doctor?" Dave grumbled, unable to resist poking at Jason just a little, if for nothing else then to make him as vulnerable as he felt.

"If it means I get to tell you what to do, then yeah. A doctor it is."


	4. Rookies

**A/N – Uploading two today because I'm in such a good mood…**

**For disclaimer see chapter one**

"I don't see what you've got against this guy, Jason. His résumé is perfect. Damn, _he's_ as close to perfect as you can get."

"Too perfect, David," Jason shrugged, throwing down the file he was holding protectively and flipping open the one that Dave was exalting, "There is no such thing as perfection."

"So what, you're gonna punish some kid just because you think he must have something wrong with him?"

"That's exactly what I'm doing," he nodded, "If he breaks, it will be in a big way. We can't risk a time bomb like that here."

"That's bullshit, Jason," Dave said, throwing his chair back and stalking over to the coffee machine, where he habitually got out two mugs even though he was angry at the other man. Cursing silently, but keeping the extra one out anyway, he added, "You just don't like him because he started out as a lawyer."

"Well, why do you like him so much? You don't like lawyers either."

Dave shrugged as he placed the coffee on the table and pulled the file towards him, looking thoughtfully into the face of the hopeful new recruit. The kid _looked_ every inch an FBI agent, but it was more than that.

"Couldn't you see it, when he was talking? He's just got something that the other guys didn't. I can't explain it. He'll be one of the best, if we only give him a chance. You have to trust me, Jason," Dave implored, simultaneously aware that he was begging and wondering just why this kid had managed to make him do so.

Jason's silent surrender came in the form of picking up the nearest phone and dialling quickly, as though he had to get it done before he changed his mind. After two rings, there was an answer, and Jason couldn't help but smile at the look on David's face as he spoke to the young man on the other end of the line.

"Hello?

"Aaron, it's Jason Gideon. We've got some good news for you."


	5. Sell Out

**A/N – Only one more to go!**

**For disclaimer see chapter one**

"Were you even planning on telling me, David? Or were you thinking that I wouldn't even notice you'd left?"

Anger was a rare emotion from Jason and for a brief moment Dave had been thrown when the other man had come storming into his office and started shouting at him. Worse still, he knew he had earned it, but that didn't make Jason's tone sting any less, and he found himself biting back almost before he knew what he was doing.

"Of course I was going to tell you, Jason. I wasn't aware I needed your permission to speak to the director."

"So it's true. You're really leaving."

The lack of a question in Jason's statement showed that he had accepted whatever rumour he had heard as truth. The look on his face, however, showed the exact opposite.

"A book deal, David? After everything you said about Max."

"Well, things change. I've had enough."

It was the wrong thing to say.

"And you don't think I haven't? Sometimes I think about getting out as well, but someone has to stay and make sure the kids are ready to take over."

"And you're a better man than me for it," Dave conceded, suddenly aware of how tired Jason sounded, "I'm sorry, but this is the only way out."

"Bullshit."

The curse sounds awkward coming from Jason's lips and they both pause for a second, aware that some line has been crossed that neither even knew existed. Jason recovered first and carried on with his tirade.

"If you want to get out that badly, David, that's fine. I won't say anything more about it. But I can't believe that all these years we've worked together mean so little to you that you wouldn't even _mention_ to me that you were considering retirement."

"It's not that, Jason! It was never like that. You-"

"What? Because from where I'm standing, that's what it looks like!"

"I don't give a damn what anyone thinks in this bloody place, apart from you!" Dave exclaimed, "And I had no idea how I was going to tell you. So why don't you back the hell off and leave me alone. I already feel like shit."

The other man's mouth worked furiously, almost comically, as he processed what Dave had just said. In the face of Dave's admission, it was as though their argument had hit a wall that there was no climbing over or getting around. Eventually, Jason threw his hands up in defeat and stalked towards the office door, turning just before he stepped out.

"Have a nice life, Rossi. Don't let your guilty conscience keep you up at night."

And as much as he wanted to answer back with a snarky comment, Dave knew that Jason was right.

It didn't make him feel any better.


	6. Boston

**A/N...And one time Dave returned the favour ;) I had a blast writing these; I hope y'all enjoyed them as much as me.**

**For disclaimer see chapter one.**

He heard it on the news, early one morning when he was engrossed in writing his new book and up before dawn every day to jot down whatever had occurred to him in the night.

A bomb in Boston.

He was close to turning away from the television when he heard a vague mention of the FBI's elite Behavioural Analysis Unit and what the news reader was calling a 'tragedy'. The reports were still fuzzy, the number of people killed uncertain, and the only thing keeping Dave from immediately dialling a phone number that he still hadn't forgotten was the fact that he wasn't sure he could handle it if it went straight to voicemail.

So he made coffee and he spent the early hours watching the distinctly unhelpful news reports, turning the Galen bracelet over and over in his hands. At nine am, his phone rang and he pounced, knowing that at least one person in Boston was still alive.

"Rossi."

"Dave? It's Aaron."

_Thank God._

"Aaron, what the hell happened?"

He was briefly filled in, Aaron's voice carefully controlled as he described the way that Jason had trusted Bale too soon and how six agents had been killed and two more, including Jason, hospitalised. The only emotion that penetrated the younger man's facade came when he described pulling Jason off the long dead body of a friend that he was trying to bring back to life.

"He broke his ribs, Dave. I've never seen him like that before," Aaron sighed, and then hesitated, "Listen, Dave, can you come out here? I don't even know where to start and –"

"I'm on my way. Hold tight. I'll get there as soon as I can."

It wasn't until he had landed in Boston, hours later, and was on the way to the hospital that Dave even thought about the last time he and Jason had been in the same room together. They'd both said things that day that Dave knew _he_ at least regretted, and he thought that perhaps the reason that they had never tried to reconcile with one another was not only because when a profiler delivered a blow, it really hurt, but because they were just too damn stubborn to admit that they both were wrong. He hoped anyway that there was some resolution to be found for them, some comfort that he could try and bring to Jason, because otherwise he couldn't say why he had made a huge effort to go and see someone who had given the distinct impression that they didn't give a damn about him. Then the cab pulled up at the hospital and he put all such thoughts to the back of his mind; it was too late for doubting.

He was greeted by an ashen, exhausted looking Aaron who looked like he hadn't slept in days. He was on the phone to someone called Derek when Dave approached him, explaining patiently that there was nothing the other man could do in Boston and he would be better off staying put and holding the fort with Reid. The man called Derek had a lot to say about this but Aaron eventually convinced him and hung up with a barely concealed sigh.

"Dave. It's good to see you."

"I wish it was under better circumstances. Where is he?"

"Just through there. He hasn't said anything since he was put in the ambulance. I can't get through to him. The doctors say its severe shock."

"Hey, if anyone can provoke him into talking it's me," Dave said, already heading towards the private room, "And Aaron?"

"Yes?"

"Get some sleep. You're no good to anyone exhausted."

Before the younger man could answer, Dave had opened the door and slipped inside. Jason was pacing, restless lengths of the tiny room, and he didn't immediately realise that someone had joined him. When he turned on his heel and saw Dave, he stopped dead and stared. Dave stared right back.

"Hi Jason. Long time, no see."

He opened his arms slightly, his palms held upwards only to try and signal a simple gesture of surrender that he hoped Jason would understand. The other man blinked rapidly, and obviously misinterpreted the meaning, because in three determined paces he was embracing Dave as tightly as he could and muttering incoherently.

"We wrote the rules about people like him, David…he broke the rules. I got it wrong – my God, they're dead. He played me. Bale played me…"

As surprised as he was by Jason's gesture, Dave didn't allow himself to show it, knowing that any attempt at communication being made was good communication, no matter how disconcerting he might find it coming from someone like his old partner. He patted the other man on the back and as soon as Jason stopped talking he began his own mantra, as soothingly as he could manage.

"It's OK, Jason. I'm here. Don't worry. I'm here now."


End file.
